Strongman in Shackles

As Jair Bolsonaro faces trial, Brazil tests its fragile democratic guardrails against the ghosts of military rule and foreign meddling.

It is a fall from grace that evokes Latin America's long and haunted history of caudillos. Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, the brash ex-army captain who once longed for the glory days of military dictatorship, now finds himself encumbered by an electronic ankle monitor, silenced on social media and increasingly cornered by the law. Last week, Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered these unprecedented restrictions, citing credible fears that Bolsonaro, accused of plotting a coup to overturn his 2022 electoral defeat, might flee the country.

Bolsonaro’s legal woes are staggering in their breadth and gravity. Federal prosecutors have charged him with leading an armed criminal conspiracy to violently overthrow democratic order and, alarmingly, with planning to assassinate Supreme Court justices and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his leftist nemesis. This alleged plot, authorities say, was hatched as early as 2021 and climaxed with the January 2023 insurrection in which Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace in an eerie echo of the January 6 riot in Washington two years earlier.

The charges reach beyond Brazil’s borders. Authorities have cited a series of social media posts and diplomatic maneuvers aimed at enlisting the United States, specifically Donald Trump’s inner circle, in pressuring the Brazilian judiciary. The alleged conduit being Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, a federal congressman and staunch Trump ally. Their efforts may have borne fruit. Last week, the U.S. State Department imposed visa restrictions on unnamed Brazilian judicial officials, a move swiftly condemned by Lula as “unacceptable interference.” Trump, meanwhile, decried Bolsonaro’s trial as a “witch hunt” while tying Brazil’s trade privileges to the fate of his ideological twin.

That Bolsonaro is on trial at all speaks volumes about the resilience and the vulnerability of Brazilian democracy. The country’s institutions, long plagued by impunity and elite impunity, have shown surprising mettle in prosecuting a former head of state. Yet the road to this moment has been paved with blood and betrayal. Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship, which ended in 1985, never fully reckoned with its crimes. Unlike Argentina or Chile, it held no truth commission until much later, and many of its torturers lived out their days untouched. Bolsonaro has long glorified that era, once remarking that the dictatorship’s mistake was to “torture but not kill.”

In that context, his trial is a national reckoning. The case hinges not just on proving Bolsonaro’s hand in the failed putsch but on confronting the persistent seduction of authoritarianism in Brazilian political life. This seduction runs deep. Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 riding a wave of anti-establishment fury, nostalgia for order and evangelical fervour. His reign saw the hollowing out of environmental protections, a calamitous COVID-19 response and the systematic undermining of the electoral system. Yet he retains a fierce following, especially among the military, police and religious conservatives.

Some of his supporters have already recast his prosecution as martyrdom. The far-right ex-leader has been banned from standing in elections until 2030, yet his political relevance lingers and with it, the risk of further instability.

How the trial unfolds could shape Brazil’s democracy for decades. The Supreme Court justices are expected to rule before year’s end. A conviction on coup-plotting alone could bring up to 12 years in prison. Yet experts warn that Bolsonaro could be detained sooner if authorities deem it necessary to prevent disruption or flight.

The parallels with Trump are striking - two demagogues who smeared elections they lost, fanned mobs into violence, and now face prosecution. Yet there is one crucial difference: Brazil, for all its turbulence, may be ahead in holding its strongman accountable. Whether that accountability leads to healing or further polarization depends on whether the institutions can withstand both pressure from abroad and fury at home.

In the end, Bolsonaro’s trial is a referendum on whether Brazil can finally put its authoritarian past to rest or whether, like its Amazon forests, the gains of democracy can still be razed with impunity.